The NY Times quotes Norbert Bolz, a professor of media science at the Technical University of Berlin, as saying: "There is a structural crisis. But I have to say, honestly, how surprised I am by the success of the main media houses in dealing with this."

In fact, the three cases mentioned above were largely due to specific, rather than generic, problems. They do not necessarily indicate a widespread collapse of the German press.

Advertising is gradually declining but profitability has been sustained by cover price rises. And the NY Times provides one eye-opening statistic: "The number of newspapers in Germany actually increased in 2012."

Then there is the internet, of course. German publishers have attempted to cash in by persuading Angela Merkel's government to introduce legislation aimed at forcing search engines and aggregators, such as Google, to pay licensing fees for links to their articles. Google, unsurprisingly, remains bitterly opposed.